Greg Lutzka Wins The Dew Tour That Is This Earthly Life

One Toyota to rule them all

Like manyothers, my imagination was captivated this week with the revelation that frontside-favoring Milwaukeean Greg Lutzka completed an agreement with Toyota to produce a line of white cars with a drawing on the side. While it may have made more sense for Toyota to go with, say, valley boy Mikey Taylor for this honor given his fondness for street racing and, one can only assume, Tokyo drifting as well, you have to commend Lutzka for his business savvy and sheer ballsiness, managing to convince a struggling car company to adorn the side of a hatch-back with a funny-looking moustache dude pulling his pud.

(Notice to Madison Avenue: This is exactly the type of low-brow, bottom-of-the-barrel approach that I keep trying to tell you resonates with kids today. And this is why those kids are tomorrow’s today’s Toyota buyers.)

Wikipedia (where someone, possibly on the Lutzka payroll, keeps rather close tabs on his trophy-packed contest schedule), tells us that the Matrix is Toyota’s Debbie to the Black Debbie that is the Pontiac Vibe. It has received mixed reviews for safety, much like Greg Lutzka’s trick selection. Yet it also received solid marks for reliability, much like Greg Lutzka’s trick selection. Again, I refer you to the exhaustive Lutzkapedia contest compendium.

Now a lot of people poke fun at Greg Lutzka, or as he’s increasingly known, the Greg Lutzka. Though this is some true pot-kettle-black-calling shit, he does sometimes appear none too bright. There was that embarrassing month-long stint on Krooked, a partnership rumored to have come apart following the revelation that the GL adorned his bedroom walls with his own likeness in the form of Illennium ads or what have you. And one of my great regrets of last year was that I never devoted one of these none-too-precious postings to the kind of amazing Globe section, themed as it was with French techno music and some really sweet “Krazy Kings”-esque special effects.

But the Greg Lutzka’s earnest Midwestern cluelessness is deeply endearing, and puts his finger-snappin’, hat-wearin’, frontside flippin’ spinnin’ in the sort of perspective that you just can’t get when he strolls the club in a leather jacket. Why, just a few years ago the kid needed a sit-down* to learn the proper way to wipe his ass and discard the wasteful, shameful, hateful “tissue glove” method.

Now look at him. His name sparkles proudly on the side of a Toyota hatch-back. He knows Lil Jon and Ryan Sheckler. He sells his own hat made from the skin of synthetic frogs, developed in a secret laboratory owned by Oakley glasses. Australian footwear concern Globe recently approached him to design a shoe, which does closely resemble the Muska’s vaunted Sky-Top, but this is hardly a mark against the Greg Lutzka. As we all know it is nigh impossible to fade the Muska, and one can only hope to follow his lead. Which the GL wisely has done in this instance. So don’t try and tell me the kid hasn’t made it.

I read this blog all the time, but this is my first post. Does that make me a boil-pal wannabe or something?

Lutzka is confusing as fuck. I’ve been watching his rise to power since the wiskate.com heyday, which is to say, 6 years ago. I felt proud as this little-known MidWesterner slowly realized he can do front 270s with kickflips to boardslide/lipslide/bluntsides and spit them out in front of large crowds.

While he certainly is guilty of both making a name for himself as a “contest skater” and offering his autograph and reputation for multiple tangentially-skate-related signature series, I think his part in the latest, largely ignored United by Fate was hugely enjoyable and demonstrated willingness and ability to get down on some burly street stuff. His first line is sick as fuck and memorable, which is more than I can say for the other folks in that kind of $ell-out bracket (I don’t remember a single trick from the last PRod, JRog, etc parts).

It’s a shame that the bright-eyed Wisconsin kid I watched blossom decided to blossom into a corporate-crony type, but then again….if you could fakie flip lip to fakie for a couple thousand more every month, wouldn’t you do the same thing?

It took me a few minutes to even remember what board company Lutzka rides for (almost, right?). And that can be directly attributed to the fact that I don’t read Transworld — and haven’t for years — because every issue is/was basically a photo issue, there’s no content worth reading (I got tired of reading article after article about the latest team in Barcelona) and their interviews are either, “When does skateboariding feel like a job?” or “Would you rather shoot a photo or film a trick?” You’d think they are scared of someone having a real opinion and saying it in a public forum (Adam Mcnatt, anyone?). And now I’m off on a tangent.

Anyway, I wouldn’t buy a Matrix, and Lutzka having a “signature” car isn’t going to change that. The fact that Toyota produced a car to compete against the Pontiac Vibe is nonstarter (no pun intended), because Pontiac is a car company that is on the verge of going out of business, seriously. People aren’t buying Vibes in any amount of numbers to help Pontiac’s bottom line. Toyota should stick to what it does best: produce Camrys and Corollas.

i had not yet seen the UBF4 part, and just toob’d it. pretty damn good, actually. while i have trouble supporting the fedoras and white pants, i’ve got to say that if he kept it more low key, that part would be quite reynolds-esque what with the hallway lines ending in fs half cab flip crescendoes.

Normally I would find such non skate sponsors as a good reason not to like a skater. I am from Milwaukee though and have known Greg even before the supposed heyday of wiskate. He was a determined kid but never disrespectful. Nowadays he is one of the coolest and humble people you could meet. I’ve never talked to him about sponsor choices but from what I gather he is just taking advantage of the opportunities that are presented to him. He is a very hard working skater who puts in alot of work to flim when its not freezing here. I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m president of his fan club or anything but just wanted to chime in. Love this site and can’t wait to read more.

I immediately thought of that Big Brother article. I imagined that Lutzka still occasionally talks to Nieratko. Maybe a long distance phone-call, and the GL mentions Toyata has approached him, or his agent got him a meeting or whatever. That’s when Nieratko says “No, no Greg. Don’t do that.”